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The Honor of the Big Snows, a novel by James Oliver Curwood |
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Chapter 4. The Problem |
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_ CHAPTER IV. THE PROBLEM In the days that followed, there came other things which Jan could not understand, and which he made no great effort to understand. He talked little, even to Cummins. He listened, and his eyes would answer, or he would reply with strange, eery little hunches of his shoulders, which ruffled up his hair. To the few simple souls at the post, he brought with him more than his starved body from out of the unknown wilderness. This was the chief cause of those things which he could not understand. No man learned more of him than had Cummins. Even to Mukee, his history was equally simple and short. Always he said that he came from out of the north--which meant the Barren Lands; and the Barren Lands meant death. No man had ever come across them as Jan had come; and at another time, and under other circumstances, Cummins and his people would have believed him mad. But others had listened to that strange, sweet music that came to them from out of the forest on the night when the woman died, and they, like Cummins, had been stirred by thrilling thoughts. They knew little of God, as God is preached; but they knew a great deal about Him in other ways. They knew that Jan Thoreau had come like a messenger from the angels, that the woman's soul had gone out to meet him, and that she had died sweetly on John Cummins' breast while he played. So the boy, with his thin, sensitive face and his great, beautiful eyes, became a part of what the woman had left behind for them to love. As a part of her they accepted him, without further questioning as to who he was or whence he came. In a way, he made up for her loss. The woman had brought something new and sweet into their barren lives, and he brought something new and sweet--the music of his violin. He played for them in the evening, in the factor's office; and at these times they knew that Cummins' wife was very near to them and that she was speaking to them through the things which Jan Thoreau played. Music had long passed out of their lives. Into some, indeed, it had never come. Years ago, Williams had been at a post where there was an accordion. Cummins had heard music when he went down to civilization for his wife, more than two years ago. To the others it was mystery which stirred them to the depths of their souls, and which revealed to them many things that had long been hidden in the dust of the past. These were hours of triumph for Jan in the factor's office. Perched on a box, with his back to the wall, his head thrown back, his black eyes shining, his long hair giving to his face a half savage beauty, he was more than king to the grim-visaged men about him. They listened, movelessly, soundlessly; and when he stopped there was still neither move nor sound until he had wrapped his violin in its bear-skin and had returned to John Cummins and the little Melisse. Jan understood the silence, and took it for what it meant. But it was the audience in the little cabin that Jan liked best, and, most of all, he loved to have the little Melisse alone. As the days of early spring trapping approached, and the wilderness for a hundred miles around the post was crisscrossed with the trails of the Cree and Chippewayan fur-seekers, Cummins was absent for days at a time, strengthening the company's friendships, and bargaining for the catch that would be coming to market about eight weeks later. This was a year of intense rivalry, for the Revillons, French competitors of the company, had established a post two hundred miles to the west, and rumor spread that they were to give sixty pounds of flour to the company's forty, and four feet of cloth to the yard. This meant action among Williams and his people, and the factor himself plunged into the wilderness. Mukee, the half-Cree, went among his scattered tribesmen along the edge of the barrens, stirring them by the eloquence of new promises and by fierce condemnation of the interlopers to the west. Old Per-ee, with a strain of Eskimo in him, went boldly behind his dogs to meet the little black people from farther north, who came down after foxes and half-starved polar bears that had been carried beyond their own world on the ice-floes of the preceding spring. Young Williams, the factor's son, followed after Cummins, and the rest of the company's men went into the south and east. The exodus left desolate lifelessness at the post. The windows of the fireless cabins were thick with clinging frost. There was no movement in the factor's office. The dogs were gone, and wolves and lynx sniffed closer each night. In the oppression of this desertion, the few Indian and half-breed children kept indoors, and Williams' Chippewayan wife, fat and lazy, left the company's store securely locked. In this silence and lifelessness Jan Thoreau felt a new and ever- increasing happiness. To him the sound of life was a thing vibrant with harshness; quiet--the dead, pulseless quiet of lifelessness--was beautiful. He dreamed in it, and it was then that his fingers discovered new things in his violin. He often sent Maballa, the Indian woman who cared for Melisse, to gossip with Williams' wife, so that he was alone a great deal with the baby. At these times, when the door was safely barred against the outside world, it was a different Jan Thoreau who crouched upon his knees beside the cot. His face was aflame with a great, absorbing passion which at other times he concealed. His beautiful eyes glowed with hidden fires, and he whispered soothing, singsong things to the child, and played softly upon his violin, leaning his black head far down so that the baby Melisse could clutch her appreciative fingers in his hair. "Ah, ze sweet leetle white angel!" he would cry, as she tugged and kicked. "I luf you so--I luf you, an' will stay always, ah' play ze violon! Ah, mon Dieu, you will be ze gr-r-r-eat bea-utiful white angel lak--HER!" He would laugh and coo like a mother, and talk, for at these times Jan Thoreau's tongue was as voluble as his violin. Sometimes Melisse listened as if she understood the wonderful things he was telling her. She would lie upon her back with her eyes fixed upon him, her little red fists doubled over his bow, or a thumb thrust into her mouth. And the longer she lay like this, gazing at him blankly, the more convinced Jan became that she was understanding him; and his voice grew soft and low, and his eyes shone with a soft mist as he told her those things which John Cummins would have given much to know. "Some day you shall understand why it happened, sweet Melisse," he whispered, bringing his eyes so near that she reached up an inquiring finger to them. "Then you will luf Jan Thoreau!" There were other times when Jan did not talk, but when the baby Melisse talked to him; and these were moments of even greater joy. With the baby wriggling and kicking, and making queer noises in her tiny cot, he would sit silently upon his heels, watching her with the pride and happiness of a mother lynx in the first tumbling frolics of her kittens. Once, when Melisse straightened herself for an instant, and half reached up her tiny arms to him, laughing and cooing into his face, he gave a glad cry, crushed his face down to hers, and did what he had not dared to do before--kissed her. There was something about it that frightened the little Melisse, and she set up a wailing that sent Jan, in a panic of dismay, for Maballa. It was a long time before he ventured to kiss her again. It was during this fortnight of desolation at the post that Jan discovered the big problem for himself and John Cummins. In the last days of the second week, he spent much of his time skirting the edge of the barrens in search of caribou, that there might be meat in plenty when the dogs and men returned a little later. One afternoon, he returned early, while the pale sun was still in the sky, laden with the meat of a musk-ox. As he came from the edge of the forest, his slender body doubled over under the weight of his pack, a terrifying sight greeted him in the little clearing at the post. Upon her knees in front of their cabin was Maballa, industriously rolling the half-naked little Melisse about in a soft pile of snow, and doing her work, as she firmly believed, in a most faithful and thorough manner. With a shriek, Jan threw off his pack and darted toward her like a wild thing. "Sacre bleu--you keel--keel ze leetle Melisse!" he cried shrilly, snatching up the half-frozen child, "Mon Dieu, she ees not papoose! She ees ceevilize--ceevilize!" and he ran swiftly with her into the cabin, flinging back a torrent of Cree anathema at the dumbly bewildered Maballa. Jan left the rest of his musk-ox to the wolves and foxes. He went out into the snow, and found half a dozen other snow-wallows in which the helpless Melisse had taken her chilling baths. He watched Maballa with a new growing terror, and fifty times a day he said to her: "Melisse ees not papoose! She ees ceevilize--lak HER!" And he would point to the lonely grave under the guardian spruce. At last Maballa went into an ecstasy of understanding. Melisse was not to be taken out and rolled in the snow; so she brought in the snow and rolled it over Melisse! When Jan discovered this, his tongue twisted itself into sounds so terrible, and his face writhed so fiercely, that Maballa began to comprehend that thereafter no snow at all, either out doors or in, was to be used in the physical development of the little Melisse. This was the beginning of the problem, and it grew and burst forth in all its significance on the day before Cummins came in from the wilderness. For a week Maballa had been dropping sly hints of a wonderful thing which she and the factor's half-breed wife were making for the baby. Jan had visions of a gorgeous garment covered with beads and gaudy braid, which would give the little Melisse unending delight. On the day before Cummins' arrival, Jan came in from chopping wood, and went to the cot. It was empty. Maballa was gone. A sudden fear thrilled him to the marrow, and he sprang back to the cabin door, ready to shriek out the Indian woman's name. A sound stopped him--the softest, sweetest sound in all the world to Jan Thoreau--and he whirled around like a cat. Melisse was smiling and making queer, friendly little signals to him from the table. She was standing upright, wedged in a coffin-shaped thing from which only her tiny white face peered out at him; and Jan knew that this was Maballa's surprise, Melisse was in a papoose-sling! "Melisse, I say you shall be no papoose!" he cried, running to the table. "You ees ceevilize! You shall be no papoose--not if twen' t'ous'nd devil come tak Jan Thoreau!" And he snatched her from her prison, flung Maballa's handiwork out into the snow, and waited impatiently for the return of John Cummins. _ |
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